


Insecurities

by erisnoteros



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 5+1 Things, Asian Pansy Parkinson, Black Hermione Granger, F/F, Lesbian Hermione Granger, except actually 12+1, small mention of PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:22:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22145584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erisnoteros/pseuds/erisnoteros
Summary: Pansy Parkinson had a talent for zeroing in on Hermione's insecurities.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Pansy Parkinson
Comments: 3
Kudos: 128





	Insecurities

**Author's Note:**

> Beta read by my friend [Unleash_the_Doves](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unleash_the_Doves) ♥

FRIENDS

When Hermione Granger reached her twelfth birthday having never had a friend, she felt certain something was wrong with her. September nineteenth passed unremarked upon, even by her parents who had no idea how to send a birthday card to Hogwarts. Only her classmate, the thorny Pansy Parkinson, noticed her insecurity, taking advantage of it to say, “Imagine being so unlikable that even the Gryffindors won’t be friends with you.”

Pansy’s laughter echoed through into November as Hermione started a tentative friendship with Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley.

Her parents’ joy at learning their daughter had finally made friends was overshadowed by her doubts about Harry and Ron’s sincerity.

“They’re probably only friends with you out of pity,” Pansy Parkinson said after the Christmas holidays.

It cut so close that Hermione put in extra effort to earn their friendship after that.

She’d do all their homework if they pleaded enough.

It took until she passed through Fluffy’s trap door with Ron and Harry at her side for her to feel secure.

*

PRETTY

When Hermione was thirteen she started to notice she wasn’t as pretty as the other girls her age. It felt like such a vain thing to think about. Her mother would tell her that looks didn’t matter, it was her brains that were valued. It didn’t stop that desire to be pretty. Every time she buried it, vanity would dig its way out.

“Oops, almost mistook Granger for a baby troll,” Pansy Parkinson said to the chortling laughter of her Slytherin friends.

Even the sharpness of Parkinson’s tongue didn’t tarnish her beauty. She was a very slim girl, a Caucasian-Korean mix with silky black hair, a tiny button-nose, and rose-petal lips that would quirk up in the corner when her mind her supplied her with more barbed words to fling.

Hermione’s Black British skin was always blotchy with bursts of acne that she could never fully conquer. Her lips were too thin, her nose too big, and her jaw too square. She became reluctant to look at her own face in the mirror.

“How many birds are nesting in your hair today, Granger?” Pansy Parkinson asked her on more than one occasion.

Her battle with her afro-textured hair was a losing one. The ends were always frizzy, each strand going its own separate way until it looked like a big black stormcloud. No matter how she tried, she couldn’t get the ends to smooth out into nice ringlets.

The next time she looked into a mirror, it was to check around a corner. Big yellow eyes met hers, and when she woke several months had passed. ‘Pretty’ didn’t seem to matter so much after that.

*

SMART

By Hermione’s fourteenth birthday, she had become very adept at managing her time, or rather, at managing time. McGonagall had told her she was only allowed to use the time-turner to get to her classes, so that’s what Hermione did. She crammed all her homework and sleep into normal hours of the day, and thought she was doing well at first.

With hard work and stacks of books piled taller than herself on library desks, she was the star pupil. She wore bags under her eyes and determination on her shoulders.

“She’s so desperate to be a know-it-all, it’s pathetic,” Pansy Parkinson told fellow Slytherin Millicent Bulstrode, her voice raised to reach Hermione’s ears.

Hermione had to excel in all these classes, because if she wasn’t the smartest witch of her age, then what was she good for? She’d solved Snape’s potion riddle and had figured out the mystery of the Basilisk because she was the clever one. She knew it all.

“I hear you’re failing Divination, Granger!” Pansy Parkinson called out with glee. “That’s the easiest subject there is. What a shame. If you don’t know it all, what do you have going for you?”

Hermione barrelled on through her studies, her eyes red and her vision blurring as she stayed up past midnight every night to finish just one more roll of parchment, just one more required reading. Her head pounded and she spent her days irritable, trying to get through class after class after class. She snapped at Ron for his ongoing concern about his pet rat, and turned in assignments in progressively messier handwriting, until one day she had her own moment of insight in Divination.

She didn’t have to do this to herself. 

Being her normal smarter-than-average self was enough. She didn’t have to push herself to be valued. She didn’t have to take a bogus subject like Divination, either.

*

BOYS

When Hermione was fifteen, it felt like every girl around her was getting giggly over a boy or two. She didn’t understand it. For all she pretended she was above it all, she wanted to know what it felt like to have a crush and get those butterflies in her stomach when a boy looked her way. None yet had caught her eye.

With the Triwizard Tournament underway, the whole school turned silly overnight with the announcement of the Yule Ball. Hermione was glad she wasn’t afflicted with such airheaded antics; rather, she wanted to be glad. She tucked herself away in the library, followed even there by giggling, boy-crazy girls - and tried to distance herself from it all.

“Who’d ask that troll to the Ball?” Pansy Parkinson laughed. “Even Potter and Weasley don’t want her.”

Maybe she didn’t want to go to the Ball after all. Harry and Ron could tell her all about it afterwards.

Then Victor Krum approached her, and for days afterwards she understood the light and happy feeling all the other girls experienced.

On the day of the Ball she felt beautiful, which was to say she felt nothing like herself. Victor smiled and paid her compliments, and she giggled and danced all night.

“You don’t even like him,” Pansy Parkinson sneered. “You just like that a boy likes you.”

Maybe it was true. Hermione squirmed as Professor McGonagall explained that she was the thing that Victor would most sorely miss. His feelings for her were so much stronger than hers were for him.

When the year ended, and all the awful things that came with it, she pulled Victor aside. She’d tried to feel something for him beyond being flattered by his attention. It didn’t work. It was a relief when he agreed to friendship.

She had much more important things to worry about than boys anyway.

*

PEOPLE

Hermione was sixteen when she was struck by the desire to be one of those girls at ease in a crowd. She’d watch Lavender and Parvati, or even Pansy bloody Parkinson socialise so easily, pulling in attention and laughs like they were born to do so. Hermione stood before the crowd of students at the Hogs Head and squeaked her way awkwardly through an introduction to the defence club she had cajoled Harry into forming.

She let Harry take charge of the first DA meeting. He was so much better a leader than her.

It was a strange side-effect that she found herself repeatedly approached by DA members asking her for the time of the next meeting. Strange enough that Parkinson noticed.

“So many people approaching you, Granger, it’s almost like you figured out how to have more than two friends. Except I know that’s not right. You wouldn’t be participating in a secret club, would you? Not after Professor Umbridge banned them.”

Hermione made the communication coins soon after that.

Her role in the DA became the researcher, the one who looked up useful spells to learn then passed those to Harry so he could teach everyone else.

She wasn’t the one people stuck around to chat with after the meeting was over. She didn’t know how to make people feel at ease.

Umbridge and her Inquisitorial Squad found them eventually and Pansy Parkinson, who had found their membership list, was thrilled to confirm what had long been suspected.

“A whole list of people who will only talk to you when you offer to tutor them, how sad,” she remarked, clearly enjoying herself.

But when Hermione stepped into the Ministry of Magic with not two, but five friends by her side, her unease in a crowd didn’t seem to matter so much after all.

*

HELPFUL

When Hermione was seventeen she learned about the existence of Horcruxes. Harry was meant to destroy them. Where Harry went, she went, but she didn’t know how she was going to help him with this.

Everyone knew Voldemort was back. The rising tension was palpable.

“Everyone says he’s the chosen one, that the Dark Lord has singled him out to kill him. There’s nothing you can do to help him now,” Pansy Parkinson taunted her.

Hermione studied her books anyway, though none seemed to exist that even mentioned that Horcruxes existed. She’d plan and study and plan some more, so that she could help Harry perform his deadly task if it was the last thing she did.

So that it wouldn’t be the last thing he did.

“Face it, Granger, not even your brains and your books can save Potter when the Dark Lord comes after him.”

If she couldn’t help Harry by finding answers in books to questions they desperately needed answers to, then she could help him by being by his side, always.

Maybe that would be enough.

*

SURVIVAL

When Hermione was eighteen, every day was a struggle just for survival. She didn’t know what would kill her in the end: Voldemort, a Death Eater, or starvation. It made her wonder what she’d give up just to survive. Would she, in the heat of the moment, let Ron or Harry take a hit to spare her own life? 

She wanted to think she wasn’t so selfish.

Every time they came close to death - in the Ministry of Magic, at Godric’s Hollow, at the Malfoy Manor, in the depths of Gringotts Bank - she wondered if this would be it.

Would she die here?

In the familiar halls of Hogwarts, no amount of hope could halt her gut feeling that they wouldn’t all make it out of this alive. A dark thought haunted her, that maybe they should comply with Voldemort’s demands, because if they didn’t hand over Harry then what chance did any of them have?

And as Voldemort’s voice faded from the stone walls, one familiar voice cried out.

“But he’s there! Potter’s there!”

Hermione stared at Pansy Parkinson’s pointed finger, her raised arm shaking with fear, and it was exactly how she felt.

Harry did go to the forest to die in the end. Hermione wept, though it had always been inevitable.

And in the end they survived; even Harry. 

She didn’t know how but they survived.

*

HELPFUL

At nineteen, it seemed that everyone looked to Hermione for advice on how to recover from the war. Just about everyone spoke of nightmares they still had, and the Prophet asked her regularly for any words of wisdom she had for them. How, she wondered, was she meant to help them when she could barely help herself?

She gathered books on PTSD from muggle libraries and buried herself in them. She spent as much time as she could around her friends to make sure they all were well, but it didn’t feel like enough.

The sound of footsteps still made her tense, her wand falling into her hand before she was even aware of it.

She couldn’t sleep alone in a room anymore.

As part of the Golden Trio, she was approached daily by younger students around the halls of Hogwarts. She split her time between studying for her N.E.W.T.s and avoiding the war-scarred. They wanted things she couldn’t give them. She didn’t know how to stop her own nightmares, let alone theirs. She didn’t know how to help them get over the grief of all their losses.

At a Yule event held in Harry’s honour, Hermione saw a familiar face she hadn’t expected to ever see again.

“Look at you, paranoid that you don’t have answers for them, that you can’t give them the right advice,” Pansy Parkinson said.

Hermione gritted her teeth. She’d had enough of this girl poking at her insecurities for a lifetime.

“You might want to consider, Granger, that the only thing they need from you is a listening ear.”

Curiously, she was right.

*

PEOPLE

Hermione was twenty and had graduated from Hogwarts, which only intensified the number of public events she was expected to be at. Everyone wanted a piece of the Golden Trio. Ron loved it. Harry didn’t, but he managed well with the crowd regardless. Hermione was a mess.

She had never learned to manage a crowd. They overwhelmed her and she’d stumble over her answers to simple questions. While Ron made them laugh, she made them stare disconcertingly.

The Prophet painted her as an icy one, always too serious and difficult to have a pleasant conversation with.

More than wishing they’d leave her alone, Hermione wished she could learn how to be at ease in a crowd. Her years at Hogwarts had never taught her that, and she feared she’d never learn.

“You’re always so scared of what these people think of you,” Pansy Parkinson said, having managed to corner her at an event. “You’ve forgotten that they already love you.”

Hermione stopped pretending she was comfortable in a crowd. If people wanted to talk to her, they’d do so regardless of how gregarious she was.

Her image in the papers turned from being the icy one to being the shy one. They were sympathetic.

And they did, indeed, already love her.

*

BOYS

When Hermione was twenty-one, she began to understand why it had never worked out with Ron. He had been smitten with her, but her interest in him had mirrored her interest in Krum; she had only liked the attention. Realising this, she broke it off with him before he had invested too much of his heart. It was best that he was free to pursue a girl who could love him back.

She used to tell herself that she’d been too busy saving Harry to think about boys, but now that the war was over that excuse was running thin. She’d still never experienced those butterflies in her stomach around a boy. She worried something was wrong with her.

Hermione made a point of looking at the men she worked with in the Ministry, and the ones that passed her on the street, trying to find something about them that she found attractive.

When she finally found herself with butterflies in her stomach, it was at their annual Yule event where her gaze found Pansy Parkinson dancing in the crowd. Her body swayed smooth and sensual in a tight black dress.

“Don’t think I didn’t notice you looking at me, Granger.” Parkinson propped a hand on her hip. “That explains why you never liked Krum or Weasley. Don’t worry, I won’t tell.” She winked and sauntered off.

Everything made so much more sense.

Suddenly Hermione was noticing every pretty girl that walked past her. They were all so stunning she wondered how she hadn’t noticed her attraction to them before.

Even, she had to admit, Pansy Parkinson was stunning with her lips painted blood red.

*

SMART

Working for the Ministry was all well and good, but at twenty-two Hermione had loftier goals. She had never forgotten her house-elf activism, even if it had fallen to the wayside in favour of more pressing matters. Now she threw herself into it, researching every law and legal precedent with enthusiasm so that she could build a case for their equality.

Her notes grew into towers of parchment that she condensed and categorised and condensed again.

She worried she wasn’t clever enough to manage the task, that she wasn’t smart enough to process all the legal jargon that made her trawl through obscure dictionaries, or organised enough to put together a solid argument that could convince even the Ministry’s most stubborn.

She tried anyway.

Amos Diggory carried her proposition to the Wizengamot for her, where it sat in deliberation session after session until finally they agreed that house-elf enslavement would end.

As the driving force behind the bill, Hermione was heralded as a genius. No one before her had managed so much for the house-elf population.

It seemed that Pansy Parkinson sought her out intentionally to say, “You always were so clever, Granger. I always knew you’d do something like this. Imagine if we could all be as smart as you.”

Hermione watched her leave, thinking of the next big thing she could achieve with her sharp mind.

She knew she could do it again.

*

PRETTY

At twenty-three, Hermione was forced to attend celebrations commemorating the fifth anniversary of the battle of Hogwarts. As one of the Golden Trio, she could hardly not attend. There had been less events as the years went on, but this one was particularly grand, involving a black-tie dress code and a lot of hype.

As Hermione continued her ongoing battle with her hair, she was reminded of how rare it was for her to feel pretty. She could wear the most beautiful of gowns and have her makeup done by people more talented than her, but the glamour was never for her.

“I barely recognise you when you dress up like this,” Pansy Parkinson told her at the celebration.

Not many people did, it was so rare for her to look pretty. She could slick back her hair flat against her scalp and contour her face into something resembling beautiful, but she wasn’t herself.

When she was normal, plain old Hermione she wasn’t pretty.

Normal Hermione meant wearing her hair like a big bushy mane and dressing in worn jeans and comfortable jumpers. It wasn’t photogenic, it wasn’t any sight to behold, it was just her.

She didn’t have to look pretty. She shouldn’t want to look pretty. It was such a vain teenage desire.

“Now I recognise you,” Pansy Parkinson said upon encountering her out shopping. “You’re not you without your cloud of hair. I don’t think I realised until now that you look prettier like this.”

Hermione’s thoughts lingered on it all week.

She decided she quite liked being called pretty.

*

FRIENDS

When Hermione was twenty-four, she noticed that all her friends had expanded their social circles in a way that she hadn’t. Ginny had befriended the entire Harpies team, for whom she played. Harry, Ron, and Neville were close enough to their Auror co-workers that they all regularly went out to the pub together. Luna, it seemed, had a friend in every country she visited on her trips to find new exotic creatures.

Hermione still only had the five.

Five wasn’t a bad number. Her five friends were friends who she could trust with her life. But there were times when they were all busy with their other friends and she had no one to fall back on. She knew she wasn’t an easy person to get along with. It felt like she hadn’t progressed in the slightest, she was still that little girl who didn’t know how to make friends.

She needed life-threatening peril just to grow close to someone, it seemed.

Hermione would sit alone at their pub outings, watching Harry and Ginny integrate seamlessly with each other’s circles across the room.

“They all make friends so easily, don’t they,” Pansy Parkinson said, taking the seat to Hermione’s right.

She didn’t think Parkinson had much trouble making friends either.

Yet here she was sitting with Hermione.

“I’d like to be your friend, if you’d take me after all the times I hurt you.”

This was Pansy Parkinson, the girl who always managed to zero in on Hermione’s deepest insecurities. It had been a long time since she’d used this talent to taunt her.

A friendship without either of their lives being threatened first, she might like to give this a try.

And as Pansy smiled just for her, she felt butterflies.


End file.
